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info nTLD Stats - Not looking good .

An informative domain name related thread.

MapleDots

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Picture0387.png


According to the graph above from nTLD stats the registrations of .online are falling rapidly.

I have to say I was surprised how many of these domains were registered in Germany and continue to be especially because shorter and better ntld's are available.

It looks like mostly sites from Europe and Russia use the extension but it is being dropped at an alarming pace.


Read more at: https://blog.dn.ca/2021/07/ntlds.html
 
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amplify

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Is there any information on renewals?
 

Biggie

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Hi

after all the best keywords that "fit" the extension are taken....
then one would expect that NTLD's registration rates, would fall.

as most of what is available now, isn't worth registering or majority of good ones are at Premium Registration cost.

imo...
 

amplify

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as most of what is available now, isn't worth registering or majority of good ones are at Premium Registration cost.
This is what really made it distasteful to invest in nTLDs.

Every one (that's a "good" extension) seemed to have priced in premium names. This made it significantly unattractive by domainers, who could've been the best customers to promote the "brands". Instead, they're crippling, but still in profit because of the premium (and mostly defensive) registrations. I'm really unsure where GoDaddy thinks these things are headed to throw in $100 million... maybe they can make that in 20 years and it's a forward-thinking buy? I don't know. Hopefully, they rethink the pricing model to understand that investors could be the key audience in order to promote them.
 

Biggie

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Hi

GD's purchase NTLD's is just an expense, that they can write off.....while they manage their new holdings

it's another "biggie coup" in their scheme of things

imo...
 

jmcc

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Hi

GD's purchase NTLD's is just an expense, that they can write off.....while they manage their new holdings

it's another "biggie coup" in their scheme of things

imo...
Far more than that, Biggie,
Godaddy is now a player in the new gTLDs game and it has what a lot of the other registry operators do not: its own direct-to-user sales sites. Usage in some of its acquired NGTs is low. Among some those aquisitions are some geo gTLDs. They are quite interesting in that they are more like ccTLDs than gTLDs. Unfortunately, some have not performed well.

Regards...jmcc
 

accurate

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Far more than that, Biggie,
Godaddy is now a player in the new gTLDs game and it has what a lot of the other registry operators do not: its own direct-to-user sales sites. Usage in some of its acquired NGTs is low. Among some those aquisitions are some geo gTLDs. They are quite interesting in that they are more like ccTLDs than gTLDs. Unfortunately, some have not performed well.

Regards...jmcc
What do you mean John?
 

jmcc

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There are some new gTLDs that have failed to break the 10K registrations mark. A few are struggling around the 1K mark. They may have a place with registry portfolio operator but their survival as a stand-alone gTLD would be in question. The .WED gTLD is one of the most terrifying examples of wishful thinking in the 2012 round of new gTLDs. It wanted to increase the renewal fee to a few thousand Dollars per domain name after the first few years in the mistaken belief that it would encourage new business. The problem is that registries make reliable income from renewals. The registry was basically chopping itself off at the knees in an attempt to make itself taller. It didn't work and the gTLD went into EBERO (ICANN's graveyard). It has been on sale for quite some time but there doesn't seem to be much interest.

Some of the geos have renewal rates that align with their local ccTLDs. In most of the EU, the renewal rates for the ccTLDs is around 72%. The .NYC gTLD is performing better than the .BOSTON or .VEGAS gTLDs but that's because of the relative size of the markets and how it is marketed. Some of the geo gTLDs suffered from a pile of low quality registrations that did not renew. While they made the gTLDs look big, the usage rates (developed websites versus PPC/Sales/Hold/Unused domain names) fell through the floor.

This is a very dangerous thing for a newly launched TLD. A new TLD needs visibility and having people see working websites is a way of building the TLD's profile and getting more registrations and development started. The last thing it needs is a bunch of domain names on PPC or on sale. If ordinary people see that a TLD is mainly parked or on sale then they will stick to what they know and that's generally .COM and their local ccTLD. (It completely poleaxed .EU as the alternative to .COM in the European Union market and it never recovered.)

With some of the US geo gTLDs, the main competition is .COM and as the .US registry has found out, it is very difficult to compete with .COM in the US. The non-US geos are competing with their local ccTLD (generally a far stronger brand than .COM in their local market) and .COM. Where there's a large enough market (capital cities or New York), the geo gTLD has the chance to develop into a pseudo-ccTLD but that takes a lot of expensive marketing and the local population has to be convinced that it is *their* TLD. That identification with the TLD as being *their* TLD is the secret to the success of some ccTLDs and it is why even .COM is struggling in those markets.

Godaddy has the biggest domain name storefront in the world. People just think of it as being "Godaddy" but it has bought many of the top ccTLD registrars in some European markets. When you look at some of these markets, Godaddy itself is not a major player but when those Godaddy-owned registrars are included, it generally ends up in the top 10 if not the top 5 registrar/hosting brands in those markets. This is what makes Godaddy's move into the registry side of the business such a big thing. Google is quite clueless about the domain name business but decided that it should get into the 2012 round of new gTLDs. It had more money than sense. Godaddy is the major global player. The gTLD market, at a registry operator level, is beginning to consolidate and there's Verisign, Donuts and Godaddy with a few smaller operators. Only Godaddy is a serious player in the ccTLDs markets and that's where a lot of the development and registrations have been shifting over the last few years. Ordinarily, the registry has to convince registrars to market and sell their domain names. But with Godaddy, it is, for some gTLDs, registry and one or more of the larger registrars/hosters.

Regards...jmcc
 

accurate

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The .WED gTLD is one of the most terrifying examples of wishful thinking in the 2012 round of new gTLDs.
We will see more like it.
It didn't work and the gTLD went into EBERO (ICANN's graveyard). It has been on sale for quite some time but there doesn't seem to be much interest.
.BUZZ tried to sell and had no takers.

Some of the geos have renewal rates that align with their local ccTLDs. In most of the EU, the renewal rates for the ccTLDs is around 72%.
That's pretty good.

The .NYC gTLD is performing better than the .BOSTON or .VEGAS gTLDs but that's because of the relative size of the markets and how it is marketed.
Yeah .NYC is a strong geo-brand ihmo.

Some of the geo gTLDs suffered from a pile of low quality registrations that did not renew. While they made the gTLDs look big, the usage rates (developed websites versus PPC/Sales/Hold/Unused domain names) fell through the floor.
You see this when looking at SpamHaus.

This is a very dangerous thing for a newly launched TLD. A new TLD needs visibility and having people see working websites is a way of building the TLD's profile and getting more registrations and development started.
It seems .CLUB is the only one truly did well but idk.

The last thing it needs is a bunch of domain names on PPC or on sale.
They don't need domain investors! 😄

If ordinary people see that a TLD is mainly parked or on sale then they will stick to what they know and that's generally .COM and their local ccTLD. (It completely poleaxed .EU as the alternative to .COM in the European Union market and it never recovered.)
What happened with .EU?

With some of the US geo gTLDs, the main competition is .COM and as the .US registry has found out, it is very difficult to compete with .COM in the US.
Would be nice to see .US be successful. 🇺🇲

Thanks for all your insight John.
 

jmcc

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We will see more like it.

.BUZZ tried to sell and had no takers.
Quite a few more already. Some of them have been picked up by portfolio operators. This kind of thing makes a non-viable small gTLD commercially viable as part of a portfolio as the marketing budget is bigger. The .BUZZ would have been a good gTLD if the demand for new gTLDs hadn't collapsed with the end of large-scale Domain Tasting in 2008/2009.

That's pretty good.


Yeah .NYC is a strong geo-brand ihmo.
The thing with a geo-brand is that the people have to identify with the region and it has to be a big enough market. New York is an amazing brand in this respect and it has a large enough population. These geo-brands are never going to equal .COM or the local ccTLD in terms of sales and volume.
You see this when looking at SpamHaus.


It seems .CLUB is the only one truly did well but idk.
It was very well marketed but it became partially dependent on discounted registrations to keep the volume up. That's a very tricky thing to get right because the deeper the discount, the lower the renewal rate. It also attracts the wrong kind of registration activity (spam/malware etc) that can cause big problems for the registry.
They don't need domain investors! 😄
They do but not in the way people think. Ever since .MOBI was launched, the premium domain names have been held back for auction by the registry so it is not exactly a level playing field. With a level playing field, there's land rush for good domain names when a new TLD launches and that creates interest and activity. The ICANN rules were changed so that registries could own shares in registrars (before the 2012 round launched). Fastforward to the launch of the new gTLDs and people found that registry owned registrars had reserved the "premium" domain names. No land rush. No interest. No development. Few registrations. Some of the problem was down to new gTLD registry operators thinking like domainers rather than registry operators. Domainers drive interest in a new TLD but a new TLD needs all sorts of registrants (retail, personal, business, brand protection, speculative) and, more importantly, registrants who will develop working websites on their domain names. Take tens of thousands of domain names out of circulation and put them on PPC/sales landers and it gives people the impression that the TLD is a dead zone. People simply don't bother going back to sites on that TLD because they get the impression that there's nothing there.

The brand protection aspect of the new gTLDs was also a problem. The Intellectual Property people (lawyers and brand owners) lobbied ICANN over the possibility of having to defend their trademarks in over a thousand gTLDs. So a compromise on brands was reached. It meant that the new gTLD registries didn't get the financial boost from brand protection registrations. Brand protection registrations are very sticky and keep renewing year after year. They are guaranteed income for a registry. If there is on factor that determined the fate of many of the new gTLDs it is simply this: marketing. Many of the new gTLD registries had absolutely no idea of how difficult it is to launch a new TLD and the finance that needed to be spent on marketing and publicity. It may have been that they had very poor advice. (There was a lot of snakeoil merchants around who claimed to be domain name experts but they were anything but.) Some seemed to be operating on the Field Of Dreams fallacy (if you build it, they will come). Without domainers driving interest, people just ignored many of the new gTLDs.
What happened with .EU?
A massacre due to the cluelessness of the European Commission and its advisors. They hadn't a clue about what was happening with the domain name industry when they created the regulations. They chose a small ccTLD registry that had never operated a gTLD with multiple markets. It all went terribly wrong. (The story is in covered in the free pages of the Domnomics book on Amazon.) Since Domain Tasting was starting off in .COM/NET at the time, the .EU was the next big thing so a pile of front companies were set up in the EU to target high value keywords. People in the EU found it very difficult to get their domain names in .EU so they effectively abandoned it as a .COM competitor. The real damage followed. Those .EU portfolios registered via the front companies were dumped at a fraction of their cost in the few years after the landrush. Development in the ccTLD effectively stopped. The sale prices of .EU domain names collapsed and the European ccTLD registries saw their own registration volumes increase. Even today, the .EU is still less than 5% of the domain name footprint of most EU countries. (The Irish number is a bit strange and is a sideeffect of Brexit (the UK leaving the European Union). The Portuguese number is odd for a different reason as there has been a promotion of the .EU to new businesses in Portugal.
Would be nice to see .US be successful. 🇺🇲
It would have been great to see Bob Parsons taking over the .US registry back in the day. He would have successfully marketed the ccTLD. The problem is that the .COM is the de facto US ccTLD and that makes it a very difficult proposition. What a ccTLD registry needs is the Mom and Pop registrations. They are the ones that give a ccTLD its credibility because they develop websites and people use those websites. Big brands like Google, Microsoft and Facebook don't matter in a ccTLD. People remember these brands rather than the extension.

If the .US registry gets its act together and effectively markets it as the US TLD, then it should do well. Had it been marketed more effectively, it would have been around the 50M to 60M registrations mark by now. There's a tipping point for ccTLDs where people begin to think of the ccTLD as *their* TLD and identify with it. When that happens, the numbers of gTLDs begins to fall and the bulk of the new registrations volume switches from .COM to the ccTLD. Despite ICANN's hope for gTLDs, much of the new registrations each month are ccTLD.

Regards...jmcc
 

accurate

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It was very well marketed but it became partially dependent on discounted registrations to keep the volume up. That's a very tricky thing to get right because the deeper the discount, the lower the renewal rate. It also attracts the wrong kind of registration activity (spam/malware etc) that can cause big problems for the registry.
The best thing to happen to .CLUB is Clubhouse.

I see a lot of simple websites for Clubhouse Clubs using a .CLUB domain. It's email sign-ups or info about when the Clubhouse rooms happen.

I'm still dropping many new gTLDs this year. They suck and there is no aftermarket demand despite what people say.

I'm a .COM guy. 👍🏽

I have some websites on .US and .NET domains. I own good .ORG domains too.

It would have been great to see Bob Parsons taking over the .US registry back in the day. He would have successfully marketed the ccTLD.
That would have been a great idea.

The problem is that the .COM is the de facto US ccTLD and that makes it a very difficult proposition.
That's the truth.

What a ccTLD registry needs is the Mom and Pop registrations. They are the ones that give a ccTLD its credibility because they develop websites and people use those websites.
I agree. I've seen .US be used by a lot of cannabis brands and dispensaries here. 🌿🇺🇲

Big brands like Google, Microsoft and Facebook don't matter in a ccTLD. People remember these brands rather than the extension.
Zoom.US should have rocketed .US domain growth ihmo. 🤷🏽‍♂️

If the .US registry gets its act together and effectively markets it as the US TLD, then it should do well.

I doubt GoDaddy/Neustar have plans for that but who knows.

I like .US domains renewal prices haven't been raised and are reasonable at most registrars.

Had it been marketed more effectively, it would have been around the 50M to 60M registrations mark by now.
I doubt .US will ever get there. Maybe in 100 years. 😬
 

jmcc

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Zoom.US should have rocketed .US domain growth ihmo. 🤷🏽‍♂️
That's one side of the brands effect in action. People remember Zoom but not the extension (early market). With a mature market, people expect that the brand uses *their* TLD and will type their TLD extension after the brand. This is why people still add .com to a brand in the US market expecting it to be the website that they want.

I doubt GoDaddy/Neustar have plans for that but who knows.
Even without Bob Parsons, Godaddy is a major player with a lot of shelf space. If it puts a TLD high on its checkout page or search options, that will boost the numbers of registrations. Not being on Godaddy excludes a TLD from much of the US market.
I like .US domains renewal prices haven't been raised and are reasonable at most registrars.


I doubt .US will ever get there. Maybe in 100 years. 😬
Renewal fee stability is a very important thing for TLDs. The last thing that the registrant wants is to be mugged for renewal fees building their business or website a TLD. It might take a while for the .US to get to the 50M mark but there is a shift away from gTLDs that could help. The other thing that the registry should not do is to repeat the discounted registrations fiasco that flooded the ccTLD. It will be a long road but having Godaddy's marketing power will help.

Regards...jmcc
 

accurate

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is why people still add .com to a brand in the US market expecting it to be the website that they want.
This happens much more than people realize.

I copied an email from a .IO website and I guess the marketing manager or owner accidentally put "go@Example.COM" on there.

Big mistake until I caught it. 😬

.COM is engrained in the American mind. 👨🏽‍💻
Even without Bob Parsons, Godaddy is a major player with a lot of shelf space. If it puts a TLD high on its checkout page or search options, that will boost the numbers of registrations. Not being on Godaddy excludes a TLD from much of the US market.
That's true and I think this seriously hurt UNR domain extensions.

Considering all of the new gTLD shenanigans, I gave up on all of them.

Renewal fee stability is a very important thing for TLDs. The last thing that the registrant wants is to be mugged for renewal fees building their business or website a TLD.
Agreed and I still remember what Unitegistry did hiking prices.

As a webmaster, business owner, domain investor, etc. I do not want domain renewal prices to get jacked-up to insane levels.

I'll stick with .com, .net, and .org domains.
 

accurate

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This short video with Esther Dyson explains it well. @jmcc

She was right all along. Including Rick Schwartz.

 

jmcc

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Agreed and I still remember what Unitegistry did hiking prices.
That was, ironically, the point at which Frank Schilling stopped thinking like a domainer and started thinking like a registry operator. However, it was poorly implemented and there should have been better terms for those who had registered domain names.

Higher regfees encourage renewals but only if they have been (roughly) at that level since the TLD was introduced. This is because people tend to value things that they have spent money on even when they are not particularly valuable. (The Sunk Cost fallacy.) There is also a golden handcuffs aspect to registries increasing the renewal fees on marginal TLDs. It targets brand protection registrations which are continually renewed but it damages the credibility of the TLD. Eventually people just drop their domain names in the TLD.

Regards...jmcc
 

jmcc

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This short video with Esther Dyson explains it well. @jmcc

She was right all along. Including Rick Schwartz.

Her heart is in the right place but even in retrospect there's a lack of awareness of how rapidly the domain name industry was changing even then. The switch from gTLDs to ccTLDs started in the mid-2000s and, like a lot of ICANN people from that time, she seems almost completely focused on the US market. Rick Schwartz's analysis was far more accurate.

Regards...jmcc
 

accurate

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Her heart is in the right place but even in retrospect there's a lack of awareness of how rapidly the domain name industry was changing even then. The switch from gTLDs to ccTLDs started in the mid-2000s and, like a lot of ICANN people from that time, she seems almost completely focused on the US market.

While she is American. :)🇺🇸

Rick Schwartz's analysis was far more accurate.

That nobody asked or wanted new gTLDs? 🤣
 

mr-x

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Not al new tlds are loosers. Hold backs, outlandish prices for registration and renewals are holding acceptance back.

Why not pay 1 million for a single word .com as opposed to $50K every year for a single word.whatever? ICANN and registrars have rigged the market and are reaping the rewards.


1634745555973.png
 

jmcc

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While she is American. :)🇺🇸
It was the lack of awareness that was the problem. What happened in the mid-2000s was that large-scale Domain Tasting created a very real shortage of good dropping domain names. Some gTLDs had the entire day's drop tasted. That created a false demand. So rather than focusing on the gTLDs, people began to focus on their local ccTLDs which had been relatively ignored until then.

ICANN was shamed into taking action on tasting. After some of the main players had been hit with legal action things changed. By 2009, the demand for new gTLDs was gone because large-scale Domain Tasting in the gTLDs had ceased due the abused Add Grace Period having a cost. Registrars didn't have to pay anything for domain names deleted in the five day AGP but the solution was to implement a kind of restocking fee for AGP deletions over a percentage (10% I think) of the new registrations in a month. Google also stated that it would not provide PPC feeds for AGP domain names so that killed most of the monetisation of tasted domain names. The figures for tasting were quite horrific. Over 1,000,000,000 .COM domain names were registered and deleted over the Domain Tasting period.

That nobody asked or wanted new gTLDs? 🤣
After 2009, it was mainly the registries, registrars and ICANN that were pushing the whole new gTLDs idea.There were some valid arguments for a few geo gTLDs. The public had largely moved on and the domain name industry had changed. The disconnect between the world of ICANN and that of reality was visible with ICANN's "projections" for the number of new gTLD domain names that it thought would be registered in the first year. It initially projected 15 million. The problem was that the demand for many of these new gTLDs had disappeared in 2009 because of the artificial shortage created by Domain Tasting and ICANN's lack of action on tackling that problem.

Regards...jmcc
 

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